Reliance, Inc. to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $1.20 (NYSE:RS)

Reliance, Inc. (NYSE:RS) declared a quarterly dividend on Thursday, April 24th, Wall Street Journal reports. Investors of record on Friday, May 23rd will be paid a dividend of 1.20 per share by the industrial products company on Friday, June 6th. This represents a $4.80 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.58%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, May 23rd.

Reliance has raised its dividend payment by an average of 17.0% per year over the last three years and has increased its dividend annually for the last 15 consecutive years. Reliance has a dividend payout ratio of 24.9% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Research analysts expect Reliance to earn $18.12 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $4.80 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 26.5%.

Reliance Stock Down 0.2%

Shares of RS opened at $303.71 on Wednesday. Reliance has a 52 week low of $250.07 and a 52 week high of $326.87. The firm has a market cap of $15.97 billion, a P/E ratio of 19.67 and a beta of 0.91. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $285.84 and its 200 day simple moving average is $290.26. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.10, a quick ratio of 1.58 and a current ratio of 3.21.

Reliance (NYSE:RS) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, April 23rd. The industrial products company reported $3.77 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.66 by $0.11. Reliance had a net margin of 6.33% and a return on equity of 11.87%. The business had revenue of $3.48 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.44 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business earned $5.30 EPS. Reliance’s quarterly revenue was down 4.4% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts forecast that Reliance will post 16.98 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Reliance news, CEO Karla R. Lewis sold 31,136 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, February 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $300.52, for a total transaction of $9,356,990.72. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 90,230 shares in the company, valued at $27,115,919.60. This represents a 25.65% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Company insiders own 0.35% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Trading of Reliance

An institutional investor recently raised its position in Reliance stock. Empowered Funds LLC increased its position in shares of Reliance, Inc. (NYSE:RS) by 4.8% during the 1st quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 5,662 shares of the industrial products company’s stock after acquiring an additional 258 shares during the period. Empowered Funds LLC’s holdings in Reliance were worth $1,635,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 79.26% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, KeyCorp increased their target price on shares of Reliance from $321.00 to $327.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Monday, February 24th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $319.00.

Reliance Company Profile

Reliance, Inc operates as a diversified metal solutions provider and the metals service center company in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company distributes a line of approximately 100,000 metal products, including alloy, aluminum, brass, copper, carbon steel, stainless steel, titanium, and specialty steel products; and provides metals processing services to general manufacturing, non-residential construction, transportation, aerospace, energy, electronics and semiconductor fabrication, and heavy industries.